Tiny was so freaking excited about starting Kindergarten. She was pumped.
She rose early in the morning, got dressed, we brushed her hair to get the world's biggest knot out, did cute pigtails, packed morning tea and lunch, and then off we went.
She was so excited she ran the length of the block to the school gate.
Once we passed the school gate, a look of worry clouded her little face. I could see the nerves kick in, and I felt them too. I spotted some familiar faces and quickly pointed them out to her. Immediately the tension dissipated and she relaxed a little.
We walked hand in hand to her classroom (which was the Doctor's Kindy classroom) and despite the crowd of parents, found a spot at a table. The girl sitting next to her was playing and we discovered her name was Lily - Tiny's favourite name. I started chatting to her mum and the girls played, cautiously. Tiny spotted someone from daycare - and then declared: "You can go now."
De javu. I think this happened when the Doctor started school.
So I left, after standing at the classroom door and spying on Tiny for a wee while. I didn't want to leave my wee Tiny. It hurt my heart. Finally I walked down the stairs and off into the playground where I ran into a friend, broke down - and told her not to talk to me and not to be nice to me.
I chatted a bit with some other mums, and then left the playground for the day.
In the afternoon I arrived early, got the world's best park (there's a lot of world's best here, right?), and mentally prepared myself for seeing my tiny Tiny walk out for the first time. I gathered with the other parents, and out they came - schoolbags bigger than their bodies, hats covering their faces rendering them unrecognisable unless you crouched down really low.
I could see Tiny's shoulders. Slumped. She looked down. Once the bell rang, and she spotted me, she lit up, but only temporarily. We held hands, collected the Doctor and then she said: "This didn't turn out how I expected it."
We talked a bit and she concluded that her teacher had been cranky at the class because some children had gone missing. We talked about it a bit, I told her the first day is always the hardest and that I hoped the second day was better for her. She was so depleted. Poor Tiny.
After devoutly wearing her school uniform all holidays, I had hopes Kindy would be amazing for her. She'd be a duck to water.
I know it's early days, but I feel sad for my babe. Why was that teacher cranky? Why on the first day of 13 years of school?
Second day of school and Tiny told me "it was better, but not much".
